Apparently she heard me, although I didn’t raise my voice very loud. Her good ear was toward me, it is true, and my voice was of that quality which is readily heard. She stepped outside a moment, and returned with two dusters—feather and silk—her weapons of warfare, I called them—and attacked a chair near me, while I studied her curiously from her swathed feet to her head tied up in a handkerchief. I laughed mentally as I thought of her in Madame Seguin’s drawing room among the brocade-covered sofas and chairs. How much did she hear of Ivan’s speech? I longed to question her, but did not know how to begin.
At last a happy thought came to me, and I said: “Zaidee was here last night. You know Zaidee?”
“Yes, I know her,” she answered.
“She told me of a meeting in Madame Seguin’s drawing room,” I continued. “You were there.”
I could see the old woman’s eyes flash under her spectacles as she stood with her feather duster uplifted, and said: “Zaidee is a tattler; she talks too much.”
“But I am safe; she knows that,” I answered; “and so would you, if you knew me better.”
She went on with her dusting, and I continued: “I believe Madame Seguin would turn in her coffin if she knew of the meeting. I wonder she didn’t appear to you. It was wrong in Zaidee to allow such a thing.”
“I know it,” the old woman said. “We all knew it, but she insisted. She’s a child of the Old Nick, I do believe, but smart as a whip.”
“She said you had a very fine speaker. Did you like him?” was my next question.
Alex did not reply for a moment, but rubbed a table leg with her silk duster, as if she would take off all the varnish, if possible. Then she said: